Pages

Monday, January 7, 2013

Bad Piggy aka Angry Bird Green Pig

I'm never an Angry Bird fan. Other than the red angry bird, I hardly know the other characters in the popular Angry Bird games, not even this Green Pig! Anyway, with the help of Google and my little girl, I managed to find out more about this bad piggy. And if you are just like me, who knows nothing much about Angry Bird, this green pig is the King Pig - see the yellow crown on his head ;)

About the cake - it is made up of 3-layer Chocolate Sponge with Dark Chocolate Ganache filling. The whole cake is covered with Italian Meringue Butter Cream (IMBC), flavoured with rose water and lightly coated with dessicated coconut.

About Italian Meringue Butter Cream (IMBC) - I prefer to use IMBC over topping cream (or fresh cream/non-dairy cream), as commonly used by local bakeries. IMBC gives a light and silky smooth touch to the cake. And very importantly, this butter cream is quite stable and does not melt away quickly in our hot weather. The cons are: Compared to topping cream, which just need to pour and whip, IMBC requires more time/effort to prepare, and it is also more costly, given the relatively high cost of butter.

About the decorative bits - The actual cake is 10" square, cut to approximately 9" piggy shape (the cake board underneath is 10"). The cake measures about 3" in height and weighs about 1.2 kilogram. The green pig image is first outlined on the cake using the same technique as the Little Birdie Cake, and filled with tinted piping gel.

If I were to decorate this cake again, I would ...

Instead of trimming the cake to a piggy shape, I think it will be nicer as a round cake. I wasted a fair bit of time to carve the cake to a piggy shape, but to find that the design does not really stand out. Worse, the carved-out pointed area around the crown was extremely difficult to apply the butter cream.

With a round cake, I can choose to: (a) stick kit-kat chocolate biscuits around the side (to resemble woods), (b) line the side with angry bird edible prints, or (c) paste the birthday child's name/age etc by using fondant.

As a little surprise for the birthday boy, I made a Green Piggy birthday card for him. Hope he had a wonderful birthday celebration. Happy Birthday, Reyon!

I tried the edible prints from Reeney Baking Supplies for my Christmas cupcakes. The taste is ok, very much like fondant with printed image on top. It is very easy to use - just peel and stick. Other than existing images, I think Reeney can customise images, but need to check with her.